"When Onon the common cuckoo took off from Mongolia last June no one expected him to make a 26,000 km round trip to southern Africa.
Onon has not only amazed conservationists, but gripped social media across the globe. As coronavirus lockdowns brought the world to a virtual standstill, fans followed online updates from the Mongolia Cuckoo Project, watching in awe as Onon cruised across oceans and made 27 border crossings in 16 countries."
How the heck do they find home again? I don't think I could find home after a few km in suburbia without a map or painstaking notes. I know birds have magnetic sensors, and the ability to memorize geographic features, but seriously this is a long journey. Are they simply following the gradient of caterpillar populations each way, and the location of home has evolved to the apex of food production in each season?
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